Well the first week back at school flew by! I am so incredibly happy to have all my
kids back. Monday afternoon three of my students came by the classroom and
helped me get the last few things ready before classes started Tuesday
morning. On Tuesday they all came
in and I got to talk to each one about what they did over the break. For most of them the answer was, “I
went to my country.” Most of my
students are the children of either ADRA workers or people that work for the
division and so they are from all over and do a lot of traveling.
We had a really fun week! After having a whole month off of school, we had to review
just about everything. We spent
the first bit of class time going over our classroom procedures and what is and
is not appropriate. For example, I
let my kids stand up at their desk most of the time if they choose to do
so. So one of the things that we
had to review was what is and is not ok while they are standing up at their
desks. They enjoyed demonstrating
for each other different things that are and are not acceptable.
During English class I think my second graders had ants in
their pants. They could not sit
still! So we all stood up for our
review game. I would say a
word and if it was a verb they had to stand up on their chairs. If it was a noun they had to sit
down. They were all giggles at
that point and for the rest of the day two of them walked around telling me
what words were verbs and what words were nouns in every sentence they spoke.
We are doing a little project over the next month. Each of my kids had to set a goal and
we are monitoring their progress.
Each week they report to me if they feel they have made any steps toward
accomplishing their goal. If yes,
they get a sticker. If they have
not made any progress, they have to tell me in writing how they intend to fix
that in the coming week. Some of
them are really excited and have already asked if we can keep going after this
month. Others however, are still
needing a little motivation.
In less than a month we will be taking the high school and climbing
Mt. Kenya. Today was the first of
four prep hikes intended to get these kids ready for the four day backpacking
trip. We left the school at 7:30
am to head to Mt. Longonot. The
hike was about 13 k and the highest point was somewhere around 10.000 ft. It ended up taking us 6 hours.
I was asked to bring up the rear for our little
excursion. The back of the line is
a really interesting place to be.
When I go hiking, I tend to end up in the front of the line and
depending on the pace of the group I may be quite a ways ahead. The back of the line moves a lot
slower. Many of our kids are not
used to things like this and they are not really in the best shape physically,
and so today was quite a challenge.
Less than one hour into the hike, we had girls trying to sit
down every five minutes. Telling
them that stopping only makes you more tired did nothing to keep them
going. I literally held the hands
of different girls on several occasions and half dragged them up the
hills. I had a few sit down and
tell me that they were done, that they would not go any farther. They would say, “Ms. I cant do
anymore. I am not going to do
this.” My response was, “I know
that your tired and I know that it hurts. I am sorry but there is no longer an option here. You have to keep going.”
We did end up making it to the top. Seeing how excited they were and
hearing them say, “Thank you Ms. Melissa.
I could not have done it without you” was pretty great. Today, those girls learned that you can
do hard things and that sometimes you just have to keep on putting one foot in
front of the other. I strongly
believe that we do not put enough value on physical and outdoor education. In things like climbing a mountain,
there are so many life lessons. I
think that we all need to get outside more and we need to do things that push
our limits. We need to do the hard
things. The view from the top is
absolutely worth it.
 |
| Success! The hardest part is over. |
It has been a while since I have written anything. I am amazed at how fast the time is
going. Classes will be starting
again this Tuesday and kids are coming in starting tomorrow. The break has really been
wonderful! I spent hours working
on lesson plans and reading books about teaching and classroom management. I cooked a lot and I don’t think my
house has ever been so clean. I
did some sewing and crocheting. I
went on a safari and saw a lion, giraffes, zebra, and a number of other animals. Some of the other SMs had their
families here and so we were able to go on various adventures with them. One of
which involved us getting the school van stuck in the mud and having several
men come and push us out. For the
last week of break I went to Capricho with several of the families from the
school and the other SMs. It is a
resort on the Indian Ocean. While
we were there we did a lot of snorkeling.
I really enjoyed that! We
also had monkeys break into our house on several occasions and steal food out
of our kitchen. They may be cute,
but they sure do cause a lot of trouble.
For the last few days on the coast we met the rest of the school staff
in Mombasa. This was a lot of
fun! I had the opportunity to go
snorkeling again. I also got to
ride a camel and I got bitten by a giraffe when I was feeding it. Overall break was pretty great and just
what I needed to get ready for second semester. 
